After the numerous upsets witnessed in round 2, a more normal service was resumed yesterday. While Vachier-Lagrave ground down Gormally in an endgame after having been slightly better throughout most of the game, Adams took advantage of a tactical oversight by his young opponent Van Foreest to wrap up the game in only 21 moves.

What a round we witnessed at the Villa Marina yesterday! On the top three boards, Adams and Sargissian were both held to draws by Raznikov and Popilski, while Vachier-Lagrave, who had a certain edge throughout most of the game, finally got the better of Tarjan as the latter went astray with an unfortunate series of moves just before making time control.

The PokerStars Isle of Man International Chess Tournament 2014 kicked off at the Villa Marina on Douglas’ seafront yesterday. 73 players from 17 countries are participating in the Masters section and they will be joined by roughly 40 more when the Major and Minor tournaments start tomorrow.

After the morning fun “Simultaneous Chess & Poker” event, things started getting serious for the chess/pokerplayers at the Villa Marina last night. In what was the first ever official chess and poker combination tournament to be held (and what is more, part of the official UKIPT schedule) the players were first going to battle it out during 5 rounds of blitz chess, before heading to the Royal Hall in order to switch to No Limit Hold’Em poker. The default stack for the poker tournament was 8000 chips, but every win in the chess portion was worth another 1000 chips, with a draw netting you 500 more chips.

This morning at around 11am the first ever "Simultaneous Chess & Poker" event took place here on the Isle of Man. Jennifer Shahade took on 3 opponents at chess and 3 opponents at poker and scored an incredible 5-1, with only Norway’s Baard Dahl being able to beat her in their poker heads up duel. Jennifer’s other two poker opponents were France’s Alexandre Dreyfus and Denmark’s Mickey Petersen. The “chess team” consisted of tournament Chairman Alan Ormsby, Committee member Zahed Miah and professional poker player Isaac Haxton.

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John Saunders reports: the 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International was won by Radoslaw Wojtaszek of Poland after a play-off match with Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan. The two players led going into the last round and drew their ninth round game to finish on 7/9 while none of the four players on 6/8 managed to win in order to tie with them. They each take home a cheque for £37,500 with Wojtaszek also receiving a further £500 for winning the blitz play-off. The initial two-game blitz was tied on 1-1 but Wojtaszek chose White in the Armageddon game and duly won. Seven players finished on 6½: Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk (both Russia), Hikaru Nakamura, Jeffery Xiong (both USA), Wang Hao (China), Gawain Jones (England) and Baskaran Adhiban (India).

John Saunders reports: another pulsating day’s chess saw four 2700+ rated players bite the dust, all bar one beaten by players less highly rated than themselves, and in one case more than 200 points adrift. Two leaders emerge from the smoke of battle, Arkadij Naiditsch (Azerbaijan) and Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), who now both have 6½/8, while four more players are half a point behind them and are still in with a chance of a share in the top prize – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Wang Hao (China), Gawain Jones (England) and Jeffery Xiong (USA).

John Saunders reports: another remarkable round at the Villa Marina saw the number of leaders increase by one – the same names as per the round six leader board, plus England’s perennial numero uno, Mickey Adams. There was some fantastic chess played, which it gives me great pleasure to report upon. Before we move on, let’s just record the seven leaders’ names for the record: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), Wang Hao (China), Arkadij Naiditsch (Azerbaijan), Mickey Adams (England) and Jeffery Xiong (USA) all have 5½ out of 7.